The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales eBook

“And I suppose,” said I, “you will
leave her in charge of it when you join the Morays?”

“Ah!” he broke in, with a voice which
betrayed his relief: “you are in earnest
about that? Yes Elspeth will look after the castle,
as she does already. I am just a child in her
hand. When a man has one only servant it’s
well to have her devoted.” Seeing my look
of surprise, he added, “I don’t count
old Duncan, her husband; for he’s half-witted,
and only serves to break the plates. Does it surprise
you to learn that, barring him, Elspeth is my only
retainer?”

“H’m,” said I, considerably puzzled—­I
must explain why.

* * * *
*

I am by training an extraordinarily light sleeper;
yet nothing had disturbed me during the night until
at dawn my brother knocked at the door and entered,
ready dressed.

“Hullo!” he exclaimed, “are you
responsible for this?” and he pointed to a chair
at the foot of the bed where lay, folded in a neat
pile, not only the clothes I had tossed down carelessly
overnight, but the suit in which I had arrived.
He picked up this latter, felt it, and handed it to
me. It was dry, and had been carefully brushed.

“Our friend keeps a good valet,” said
I; “but the queer thing is that, in a strange
room, I didn’t wake. I see he has brought
hot water too.”

“Look here,” my brother asked: “did
you lock your door?”

“Why, of course not—­the more by token
that it hasn’t a key.”

“Well,” said he, “mine has, and
I’ll swear I used it; but the same thing has
happened to me!”

This, I tried to persuade him, was impossible; and
for the while he seemed convinced. “It
must be,” he owned; “but if I didn’t
lock that door I’ll never swear to a thing again
in all my life.”

* * * *
*

The young Laird’s remark set me thinking of
this, and I answered after a pause, “In one
of the pair, then, you possess a remarkably clever
valet.”

It so happened that, while I said it, my eyes rested,
without the least intention, on the sleeve of his
shooting-coat; and the words were scarcely out before
he flushed hotly and made a motion as if to hide a
neatly mended rent in its cuff. In another moment
he would have retorted, and was indeed drawing himself
up in anger, when I prevented him by adding—­

“I mean that I am indebted to him or to her
this morning for a neatly brushed suit; and I suppose
to your freeness in plying me with wine last night
that it arrived in my room without waking me.
But for that I could almost set it down to the supernatural.”

I said this in all simplicity, and was quite unprepared
for its effect upon him, or for his extraordinary
reply. He turned as white in the face as, a moment
before, he had been red. “Good God!”
he said eagerly, “you haven’t missed anything,
have you?”